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Undergraduate Curriculum Review Committee

Undergraduate Curriculum Review Committee. Progress Report. Background. Some concerns about recent changes to lower level courses, such as Content overlap between 212 and 311, Concerns about the intellectual content of 212 Uncertainties as to what students entering 400-level know

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Undergraduate Curriculum Review Committee

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  1. Undergraduate Curriculum Review Committee Progress Report

  2. Background • Some concerns about recent changes to lower level courses, such as • Content overlap between 212 and 311, • Concerns about the intellectual content of 212 • Uncertainties as to what students entering 400-level know • Impact on ECE unclear

  3. The Committee & its Charter • Committee Members • Adam Porter (chair), Ben Bederson, Fawzi Ewad, Bruce Jacob (ECE), Nelson Padua-Perez, Jan Plane, Jim Reggia, Hanan Samet & Alan Sussman • General Charter • Evaluate success of the new introductory sequence • Examine curriculum up through 300-level. See how its supports 400-level courses • If necessary, suggest modifications for further discussion

  4. Specific Instructions • Talk with field committees & faculty to capture well defined expectations of what knowledge, experiences & skills students entering the 400-level courses should have • Map these expectations to the material taught in lower-level courses • Use this map to ground further discussion & suggestions for curriculum changes

  5. Executive Summary • Lots of work directed at individual courses • In specific cases, outcomes have been poor • Poor fit with overall educational mission • Excessive content overlap and inadequate information flows • Inappropriate quantity and complexity of concepts • Unrealistic scheduling constraints

  6. Mapping our Curriculum • Asked faculty to define input assumptions (IN) & expected outcomes (OUT) for a variety of courses • Also gathered other information from course web pages, discussions with instructors & students and the official prerequisite structure • Built a map of UG curriculum • Captured IN & OUT for each course • Traced the flow of concepts between courses • Some limitations • Faculty responses may be incomplete or incorrect • Manually disambiguated concept descriptions • Some 400-level courses left out of survey

  7. Analysis Goals • Identify & assess content gaps and overlaps • Identify content on critical path • Examine how courses contribute to curriculum-wide content delivery needs • Observations divided into 3 groups • Structure: presense/absence & direction of information flows • Content: deeper examination of specific content • Pedagogical observations • Next slides highlight some findings. For details see • www.cs.umd.edu/~aporter/Committee/coursemap.html

  8. Structural Analysis • 100-level courses have many OUT concepts • Some OUT concepts have no sinks • CMSC212 has multiple, very different constituencies • CMSC330 serves few follow-on courses (but is still a prerequisites for all 400-level courses)

  9. Content Analysis • Prerequisite structure is highly serialized. Very hard to fit program into 4 years • Logical threads: theory (250  351), systems (212  311) & software (212  330). Confirms CMSC212 has divided focus • Content overlap in CMSC212 and CMSC311. The content of CMSC311 has been inconsistent from semester to semester

  10. Pedagogical Observations • Some students overwhelmed by content of introductory courses. Some professors unhappy with student’s mastery of basic computer science concepts and implementation techniques • Abstraction vs. Implementation. 100-level courses may be too abstract. Shift to system-level implementation in CMSC212 may be too abrupt • Developmentally appropriate content. 100-level courses may incorporate too much and too complex material • Teaching pace. The number of concepts covered in 100-level courses may not allow students and instructors enough time to teach/absorb key concepts

  11. Top Issues Going Forward • Defining curriculum-wide educational goals • What should we teach our students? • What level of mastery should we require? • How will we measure our success? • Fine tuning CMSC212 and CMSC311 • Clarifying purpose & content • Fine tuning CMSC131 and CMSC132 • Clarifying teaching schedule & approach, content, appropriate student work load & interface to CMSC212 • Prerequisite structure • Reevaluate with attention to effect on time-to-graduation

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